


threading the needle

by penhaligon



Series: Watcher Kit [9]
Category: Pillars of Eternity
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:07:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23608042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penhaligon/pseuds/penhaligon
Summary: The Watcher wants to know how Ydwin sees the world.
Relationships: The Watcher & Ydwin (Pillars of Eternity), The Watcher/Ydwin (Pillars of Eternity)
Series: Watcher Kit [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1271783
Comments: 4
Kudos: 16





	threading the needle

There was something engrossing about the way Ydwin worked, in the downturn of her mouth and the intensity of her red eyes, enough that Kit was able to remain still and quiet -- mostly -- while Ydwin took measurements from the front. When she moved out of Kit's sight, however, there was nothing similarly interesting on which Kit could focus her attention, nothing of which she hadn't seen in her cabin a hundred times already. Absent such a distraction, the need to move soon became nearly unbearable.

"Is this really necessary?" Kit asked, because it seemed to be taking Ydwin three times as long to obtain measurements from the side.

"If you'd rather an ill-fit," Ydwin said, clipped and clearly in the middle of something delicate, somewhere at Kit's left, "not at all."

Kit bit down on her bottom lip and earnestly tried to stay still without losing her mind, but that had never been a strong point of hers. "Is talking allowed?" she asked, because if the bored restlessness didn't leave by way of her mouth, she couldn't be held responsible for the twitching that was soon to occur.

Ydwin's hands were deft, leaving only the lightest impression of touches against Kit's side. "That depends on the nature of the conversation," she said, with more of her usual measured inflection, which Kit supposed was a go-ahead.

Kit didn't have to spend long pulling her thoughts together. It was something she'd wondered about for a while, but it was only lately that Ydwin had seemed more open to approach. "Every cipher perceives their powers differently," Kit said. "I have a friend who describes it like weaving threads. You mentioned how animancy and tailoring aren't so different, so I'm curious to know if that extends to your powers as well. Since..." she very nearly waved an absent hand before she remembered herself and forced her arm to maintain its stillness, "you know. We're on the subject."

A pause followed, though it was brief enough that Ydwin may have only been adjusting her grip on her measuring tape. "Weaving is... an apt metaphor," Ydwin said, and her voice moved as she spoke, circling around Kit a little further. "How would you describe yours?"

It didn't matter that Kit couldn't catch Ydwin in the corner of her eye now. Her senses tracked the pulse of a housed soul like an old, ingrained instinct, and she knew exactly how Ydwin moved anyway, cold hands delicate as Kit traced point to locality. Something shivered down her spine with it, with the touch of a soul so different from other kith. A soul independent. "It's... a bit like a manifold? Or a matrix. But I've found the thread thing useful too."

"How... mathematical." A question hummed in Ydwin's voice and thoughts.

For a moment, Kit had little problem remaining motionless as she stared straight ahead at the cabin wall and ground her teeth together. She could have easily clamped down on the sudden rush of unwanted memories, as full of holes as they were. Easy to keep things to herself and turn the questions back around on Ydwin. Instead, she said, "Glanfathans love their math."

Ydwin paused again, and a faint scratching sound followed, numbers jotted down. There was a tint to her thoughts, curious but not prying, and Kit knew that she was only getting answers first because she liked to have a point of comparison. "You are not Glanfathan."

Easy to keep the tide of complex feelings at bay, too, but Kit let them trickle out of her, there for the observing if Ydwin wanted. "The person who taught me was. And I've trained with their mind hunters." Still, she didn't want to dwell, and there was little point to it when so many of her memories were hazy, if not outright gone, so she began nudging the conversation back towards its original direction. "I trained with some vithrack too. They see their abilities like... spinning webs."

"They _are_ spiders," Ydwin said, and her voice moved from directly behind Kit to somewhere at her right: a flash of icy white and deep velvet purple in the corner of Kit's eye, an indistinct whisper of concentration at the edge of her senses. "And that is equally relevant, given that silk padding will no doubt make your life significantly easier."

Kit needed to be light on her feet and free of restriction in a fight, without compromising her physical integrity, and it was a conundrum that had given her many a headache over the course of her life, especially here in the hot south. But Ydwin claimed that she knew a technique that would give padded armor a sturdiness more befitting heavier protection, a re-purposing of a method meant to shield against deadly cold. And so here they were.

"A loom," Ydwin said, and Kit resisted the urge to turn her head and watch, as Ydwin's hands traced over her side, "or a melody. I find that music makes for a useful metaphor as well, with regards to providing structure and visualization. Resonance _is_ the linchpin of essence. It may not take the form of sound, but the amplification mechanisms are remarkably similar."

Finally, Ydwin stepped back into Kit's view, tape dangling from her hands and eyes appraising, as if searching for last-minute observations of note. Her attention was brisk and cool against Kit's mind, like a shadow of a cold front on a hot summer's day. It made Kit's skin itch. "Music is a form of math," Kit said, like throwing out an inane observation herself would scratch at it.

The corners of Ydwin's eyes crinkled, even if her face hardly shifted. "Then perhaps we think along similar lines," she said. "And your Watcher abilities? How do you view those?"

It was easy to hover perfectly still with something to sink her mental teeth into, as Kit considered her answer. It was something she'd worked on for nearly six years, not a lifetime, and so she didn't quite have the extensive understanding or the ready words that came with it. "If cipher powers act on a manifold," she said, slow and thoughtful, "then Watcher abilities act on the space they chart. They... fill in the edges."

"Dimensional thinking," Ydwin mused, her thoughts roused and her interest caught like fish to lure. Kit couldn't help the flicker of a grin, as Ydwin busied herself with scratching down few more numbers and gathering her notes and other tools of measurement to pack away. "A conversation better had over a drink, I imagine."

"Can I move now?" Kit asked, because she really was going to lose it if she had to spend another minute like this without something to do.

"If you wish," Ydwin said, closing the lid of the sewing basket and tucking it under her arm. She gave Kit a dry look. "For such an accomplished individual, you occasionally have the patience of someone half your age."

"Yeah," Kit agreed readily, stretching out her arms. "I don't like staying still. And you have even less subtlety, by the way." She had no idea where the words came from, all of a sudden, because she certainly couldn't recall a time when their like had ever come so easily. But she couldn't recall a lot of things, these days. "If you wanted to get close to me and go out for drinks, you could have just asked."

For a moment, Ydwin resembled a particularly lifelike sculpture of ice, until she thawed out enough to grasp mechanically at the basket under her arm, as if making sure that it was secure. A rush of air left through her nose, but the corners of her mouth twitched with it. "I am admittedly unpracticed," she said, wry. Kit would have called it _embarrassed_ , if the word made any sense when placed in proximity to Ydwin. "Nonetheless, the armor is a sincere offer."

"As is the drink," Kit said, and she kept on going before her inexplicable nerve evaporated. "And thank you. I'd love some armor that doesn't make me feel like I'm going to melt or take an estoc to the ribs."

Ydwin bowed her head ever so slightly. It looked more like she was avoiding Kit's gaze, but her thoughts -- at least, what excess resonated unshielded -- were not unhappy. "You are most welcome," she said. Then, straightening her shoulders, she added briskly, "Drinks, then? I believe there are a few bottles of ekkevít left, if the crew hasn't plundered them already."

"Lead the way," Kit said warmly, because the one thing that sea unequivocally had over land was that travel involved long stretches of time spent off-duty, with nothing better to do than crack open a bottle and talk dimensions.


End file.
